Half seen they flit, while here I sit
By the magical water, watching it.

In its bosom swims the fair phantasm
Of a subterraneous azure chasm,
So soft and clear, you would say the stream
Was dreaming of heaven a visible dream.

Where the noontide basks, and its warm rays tint
The nettles and clover and scented mint,
And the crinkled airs, that curl and quiver,
Drop their wreaths in the mirroring river,--
Under the shaggy magnificent drapery
Of many a wild-woven native grapery,--
By ivy-bowers, and banks of violets,
And golden hillocks, and emerald islets,
Along its sinuous shining bed,
In sheets of splendor it lies outspread.

In the twilight stillness and solitude
Of green caves roofed by the brooding wood,
Where the woodbine swings, and beneath the trailing
Sprays of the queenly elm-tree sailing,--
By ribbed and wave-worn ledges shimmering,
Gilding the rocks with a rippled glimmering,
All pictured over in shade and sun,
The wavering silken waters run.

Upon this mossy trunk I sit,
Over the river, watching it.
A shadowed face peers up at me;
And another tree in the chasm I see,
Clinging above the abyss it spans;
The broad boughs curve their spreading fans,
From side to side, in the nether air;
And phantom birds in the phantom branches
Mimic the birds above; and there,
Oh I far below, solemn and slow,
The white clouds roll the crumbling snow
Of ever-pendulous avalanches,
Till the brain grows giddy, gazing through
Their wild, wide rifts of bottomless blue.

II.

Through the river, and through the rifts
Of the sundered earth I gaze,
While Thought on dreamy pinion drifts,
Over cerulean bays,
Into the deep ethereal sea
Of her own serene eternity.

Transfigured by my tranced eye,
Wood and meadow, and stream and sky,
Like vistas of a vision lie:
THE WORLD is the River that flickers by.

Its skies are the blue-arched centuries;
And its forms are the transient images
Flung on the flowing film of Time
By the steadfast shores of a fadeless clime.

As yonder wave-side willows grow,
Substance above, and shadow below,
The golden slopes of that upper sphere
Hang their imperfect landscapes here.

Fast by the Tree of Life, which shoots
Duplicate forms from self-same roots,